Trains That Passed in the Night

Grohmann photography exhibit evokes the romance of the railroads

Thomas Garver understands O. Winston Link as a genius who
“seduced” viewers with the romance of billowing smoke, thundering pistons and
clattering train tracks. The analogy is apt given Link’s background as a
commercial photographer, says the curator of the new exhibit, “Trains That Passed in the Night:
Railroad Photographs of O. Winston Link,” which
runs through April 27 at the Grohmann Museum.

Link instinctively plumbed the dark side of the American
experience by taking the radical step of shooting most of his train photos at
night. These 36 black-and-white prints, documenting the final days of the railroad
on the Norfolk & Western Railway, evoke film noir. Link recorded the actual
sound effects of this passing life and even created a film for British
television. Garver describes the film as “very atmospheric and romantic.” So
Link’s “seduction” brings the viewer “into the scene which includes the trains,
but only as part of the total ensemble.”

Link’s “ensemble” involved locals as closely directed players in
elaborate setups and lighting, and exquisite timing. His famous 1956 photo Hot Shot Eastbound blends mediums of
transport and entertainment, life and death, romance and tragedy—muffled by the
train powering by, as an airplane screams across a movie-screen sky. A young
couple in a convertible enjoys a drive-in movie as a train hurtles past into
darkness.

Link seductively downplays tragedy, complicit with the enjoyment
amid such “passages.” In Hawksbill Creek
Swimming Hole, river bathers frolic with a rather American disregard of
fatefulness. Link creates a zig-zag interplay of angles from the current’s
ominously black flow, the starkly backlit hill, the skeletal causeway and—in
that instant—the train above, like a hell-bound or heaven-sent messenger,
depending on your viewpoint.

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